Monthly Archives: January 2011

As the Obama Administration argues for increased public investment in infrastructure and basic research, a new proposal regarding the creation of a publicly funded pharmaceutical development center bears some attention. A journalist’s observation that pharmaceutical corporations “have neither the will … Continue reading →

NSF’s Directorate for the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) has just made available the White Papers that it received in response to a call from SBE Assistant Director Myron Gutmann. Here is the announcement: I am pleased to let … Continue reading →

Last night was the annual State of the Union address. As expected, Pres. Obama addressed the importance of education and science funding. “This is our generation’s Sputnik moment” he said, comparing the challenges facing our own education policies in a … Continue reading →

It has been almost two years since the financial collapse of 2008, and economists are just now calling for a code of ethics (raise your hand if you thought economists already had a code of ethics, just like almost all … Continue reading →

A monkey trainer, handing out acorns, said, “Each of you will get three in the morning and four in the afternoon.” The monkeys were outraged. So he said, “All right, then: you’ll get four in the morning and three in … Continue reading →

The third largest manufacturer of solar panels in the U.S. is shuttering its main American factory, laying off 800 employees, and moving production to China. The NY Times article covering the background of this situation provides a sorely needed sense of … Continue reading →

The Chronicle of Higher Ed just reported a study of teaching effectiveness that focused on students’ performance in later classes. This ‘sequence’ view of performance had interesting implications for tenure and student evaluations. Students who took Calc I from a … Continue reading →

September 7-8, 2011: University of Bristol To Receive is Never Neutral: A multi-disciplinary workshop towards an Ethics of Reception This workshop will re-address the diverse responses, receptions, and rejections of ethical theorising to “Classical” narratives, here and now.

Congress is very responsive to the needs of the individual – the individual chairs of its committees, that is. So to understand the direction of federal climate policy in its dual modes of regulation and research, it’s important to look … Continue reading →

CSID Senior Fellow Julie Thompson Klein is a guest editor, along with Yves Lenoir, University of Sherbrooke, of a new special issue of Issues in Integrative Studies: Interdisciplinarity in Schools: A Comparative View of National Perspectives Special Number 28 — … Continue reading →

Can we academics account for interdisciplinarity in a convincing way? One of the theses we are exploring at CSID is that interdisciplinarity is the academy’s answer to the demand for accountability. Interdisciplinarity is often intended to tackle real-world (as opposed … Continue reading →

In The Social Network, David Fincher offers an origin myth on perhaps the most important cyber development of the 2000s–Facebook. The story is presented as a who-dun-it, flashing from legal proceedings to Rashomon-like accounts of events. It also explores questions … Continue reading →